I will be eternally grateful to Bridget Watson Payne for plucking me from the crowd and smoothing out the book process.
To my agent Lisa DiMona, thank you for your wisdom and guidance, and for fielding all my harried questions, but mostly for your friendship. Excelsior!
A humble thank-you to my most capable and trusted editor, Mirabelle Korn, for collecting the rubble of my words and reassembling them into English.
To the entire staff at Chronicle Books, hey, let’s do this again sometime.
To Danielle LaPorte, a beacon for so many: Thank you for your gracious words and thoughts. You have snatched the pebble from my hand.
Thank you to my friend and designer, Jason Bacher, for his vision, guidance, and humor in the form, shape, and content of this book. And for his good fucking design advice.
To Laura, the most perfect muse.
Special thanks to Chris Thompson, for sharing his courage and calm and wisdom with me.
A genuine thank you to Bob and Cherry, for the elbow room and freedom to write this book. And, of course, for the brick.
I am grateful to David Rhodes and the School of Visual Arts for allowing me to practice and develop my craft under their roof for so many years.
To my chairman, guru, and friend, Richard Wilde, always an influence.
A big thanks to Paula, Carolyn, and Arlyn, you make the wild machine work beautifully.
To all my past students in various classrooms, events, and coaching who worked both with me and against me to help forge these ideas.
To my friend Paul Sahre, the hardest-working man in the design game, thank you for your patience with all the fits and starts I put you through with this one.
To David Hieatt and Miranda West for keeping me in the book game. And for trusting me.
To all the bars and restaurants in Brooklyn and Texas that granted me office space, keep the tip.
Lastly and always, to Joe and Rosalie Victore for the strength and humor that has always saved me.